Setimus And The Aztec UFO Crash – The First Alien Contact Encounter Of Modern Times?

There have been many rumors of alien contact encounters between extraterrestrials from another world and selected officials from the United States government, including presidents, in the 1950s and early 60s. However, one of the first, perhaps the initial contact came in the late-1940s via a little-known (to the wider population) if divisive alleged UFO crash in New Mexico, divisive due to many people, even in the UFO community firmly believing the case is nothing but a hoax, and perhaps even purposeful disinformation.

What is further interesting is that this alleged crash that resulted in this apparent alien contact is itself one of the most controversial in UFO history. Although the apparent UFO crash in New Mexico took place after the more famous Roswell incident, it could be considered the first UFO crash claims of the Modern UFO Era given that, the initial newspaper coverage aside, the Roswell crash was not discussed within the wider population until the late-1970s, when it was looked at and investigated retrospectively. With that in mind, the alleged crash and the claims of what followed it could very well be one of the most important in UFO history.

Before we examine the apparent contact and communication between this extraterrestrial visitor from another world, we will turn our attention to early 1948 in New Mexico in the west of the United States.

Something Otherworldly Blazing Out Of The Sky

The best place to start when examining the claims of Setimus is with an alleged UFO crash that occurred a little under a year after the better-known Roswell crash in the summer of 1947. Although we have examined this briefly before, it is worth our time going over the details of the Aztec Crash once more. According to the account, which surfaced in a leaked document from the late-1980s, on the evening of 25^th March 1948 in the Aztec Desert in New Mexico, a disc-shaped object came blazing out of the sky and crashed into the sandy surface of the desert, becoming embedded in the ground. ^[1]

According to reports at the time several onlookers who witnessed the event were at the scene almost immediately, some of whom would later state to reporters that the craft appeared to be attempting to make an emergency landing. In fact, some of the initial reports of the incident came from nearby oil workers who, according to UFO investigator and author, Scott Ramsey, at first thought, they had witnessed a “brush fire”. Only when they arrived at the location did they realize they were seeing something altogether out of the ordinary.

A short time later, however, around noon that day, a military recovery team was seemingly at the location almost immediately, the wreckage said to have been transported, at least initially, to the nearby White Sands Air Force Base. According to some researchers who have investigated the case, many of those locals were warned to not speak of what they had seen.

Strong Material That Is Light As Aluminum

The document would continue to detail the craft, stating that it was made from a series of rings that appeared to rotate around a “central cabin”. It was also noted that the material of the craft was both of a strength they had not previously seen but also “as light as aluminum”.

Further information would eventually surface from an anonymous former military officer who disclosed some intriguing information to the researcher, Chuck Oldham, about a disc that crashed near Farmington in New Mexico a year or two before 1950 (which is almost certainly the Aztec crash). The anonymous officer had special military clearance and was able to read restricted files, one of which detailed the crash and recovery in immense detail.

According to the file, the craft was around 30 feet across and was the color of aluminum. What’s more, despite its sturdiness, it was so light that only two men were required to move it. There were also several portholes on the craft, although the material in these portals was unlike any kind of glass previously seen. All of these portholes were intact except for one, which had a small puncture and which was “the only defect discovered on the entire ship”. The anonymous officer claimed that the team had used “diamond drills, an acetylene torch” and all manner of tools on the damaged porthole in order to gain entry but “nothing would break through it”.

They ultimately did gain entry into the craft. However, it appeared they did so unintentionally when a door suddenly opened where there had previously been no sign of such an opening. According to the report, this door was “almost as if the material of the craft had liquified and then (when it closed) solidified again”.

A Surviving Alien

Perhaps more amazing than the craft itself was the discovery of the crew – sixteen in total (according to some reports) – fifteen of whom were dead. The document stated that these bodies were “of human shape but only three feet tall” and who were “dressed in metallic cloth of a very fine texture”. ^[2]

What is also of interest is that the report spoken of by the anonymous military officer is that the descriptions of the aliens inside were the same as those mentioned in the Hottel Memo – that they looked human but were shorter, and that they dressed in a metal-type suit.

It is also worth mentioning an indirect witness who came forward in 1994 and, under the pseudonym of “Alfred”, spoke to UFO researcher Glenn Campbell. ^[3] According to Alfred, in the early 1960s, he had worked as a technical photographer at the nuclear test site in Nevada, with one of the people he worked for specifically closely was Otto Krause, a transplanted German scientist who had arrived in the United States as part of Operation Paperclip at the end of the Second World War and was now the project physicist for many of the nuclear tests projects.

Alfred would continue that he would often find himself playing cards and relaxing with a drink or two with Krause and that on one evening, in particular, the scientist offered that he was aware of at least two UFO crashes in the late 1940s. According to Alfred, this particular night while playing cards, he found himself telling Krause about a “flying saucer” he had seen when he was younger in early 1950, which then prompted Krause to reveal what he knew.

The Claims Of Otto Krause

The one-time Third Reich scientist offered that while he was working at the White Sands base, he discovered that one disc had crashed in Roswell, while the other had come down in Aztec, New Mexico. He would continue that both of the downed cosmic vehicles were initially brought to the base, with each placed in separate hangers. Furthermore, although he himself had not seen any alien bodies, he had talked to several people who had, continuing that “one of them supposedly lived” and that he was eventually moved to what is now better known as Area 51.

Of the craft himself, Alfred offered that Krause informed him “it took them a long time to get into the thing and figure out how it worked. That was what was the classified part of the UFO – the mechanism that powered it. That was more classified than the atomic bomb!” What is perhaps further interesting about this is that Krause claimed that the object worked on “magnetic principles”. If we return to the anonymous military officer and the information he claimed to have seen in a classified report, the downed UFO appeared to use magnetic or gravitational fields as a form of propulsion. According to the officer, these extraterrestrial vehicles use “natural magnetic lines of a planet and a gravity field to move their ships from one place to another”. What is interesting about this, is that Bob Lazar would make remarkably similar claims regarding UFO propulsion.

Alfred himself claims he was aware of an apparent UFO crash in Aztec in early 1948. He would inform Good that he had read a newspaper report in the days that followed and was shocked to see the crash was said to have happened in the same canyon that he and a friend had been horse riding only days previously. As soon as he read the story, he and the same person rode out to the canyon but could find nothing there to indicate a craft had come down. Furthermore, the following day, a story appeared in the same newspaper claiming the UFO crash had simply been a hoax.

Incidentally, Alfred would also state that following his conversation with Krause he had attempted to obtain a copy of the newspaper that the story had appeared in. However, it was the only one to be missing from the public library.

There is much speculation about the credibility of the Aztec UFO Crash. ^[4] Just as there have been with such alleged witnesses as Alfred, with some suggesting he simply picked up on the crash after reading a book by Frank Scully (who we will return to later). While we will examine those shortly, first let’s turn our attention to the apparent lone survivor of this controversial UFO crash.

Setimus

As detailed by Paul Blake Smith in the book President Eisenhower’s Closer Encounters ^[5], via an apparent leaked briefing document from the late 1980s that came to light on a 2017 podcast by Heather Wade, the surviving alien was transported to another location – a facility within the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Not only did this alien being recover, but he spoke clear English and, as such, was able to communicate with his hosts, claiming his name to be Setimus.

According to Smith’s research, the extraterrestrial was discovered in a strange pod inside the crippled craft, seemingly asleep. Once he was transported to the research facility it would seem he was revived and awakened.

He had, despite his lack of height, the appearance of an “adult, Earth-like humanoid male” with a “general appearance that was completely human”. However, it appeared internally, there were some slight differences. Although these are not documented, other claims of alien human-like entities that have ended up in the hands of the authorities (including some from the old Soviet Union) have also alluded to this detail of different internal organs.

There was also a slight, but unknown accent to his speech, and even more remarkable, it was clear that this alien entity had “telepathic and psychic skills as well”. He also had a very specific diet, seemingly as he was “less able to process the wide range of foods” that the average human would.

As Smith writes, not only did this alien being speak English well, but he was also “versed in homo sapien behavior, modern geopolitics, and the planet Earth’s troubled environment”. It is interesting to note here the fact that many contact cases, both in the early years of the modern UFO era and the decades that followed, feature details that these apparent alien entities have a concern for the environment of our planet, just as was noted in the document in question.

A Long-Term Program Of Carefully Calculated Contact

Furthermore, Setimus was more than happy to be interviewed by scientists at the facility on all manner of subjects, eventually receiving “diplomatic status” from his hosts due to his cooperation and “peaceful nature”. Perhaps most remarkable of all, the document noted that:

“Setimus and his advanced ET species had ‘decided on a long-term program of carefully calculated’ contact with certain humans, including those in the highest levels of American government – like President Dwight D. Eisenhower”.

This is particularly interesting as another apparent meeting with extraterrestrials was said to have taken place in early 1954 (something we have written about before and that we will remind ourselves of shortly). Might this meeting have been connected to this apparent contact five years earlier?

Incidentally, many UFO researchers have pointed to the dropping of the atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki which brought the Second World War to an end in the summer of 1945 as the reason that UFO sightings and encounters exploded in the immediate years that followed. In the document we have been examining here, it clearly states “with the advent of the Atomic Age, this program escalated to include eventual diplomatic contact with many of Earth’s governments”.

This document is hotly debated, even within the UFO community, as to its authenticity, as is the Aztec crash itself. There were, however, further intriguing details within it.

A Safe House In Vermont

It was revealed that after over a year at the facility in New Mexico, despite his presence being completely unknown and with him being perfectly comfortable in his temporary abode, he was suddenly taken to a “safe house” somewhere in rural Vermont – a safe house that was under the control of the United States military intelligence.

Paul Blake Smith highlights how strange this location is, not to mention the risks involved in transporting an alien from one side of the country to the other. He also highlights that Dwight Eisenhower was known to have enjoyed many trips to “rural Vermont” in order to fly fish. Setimus was said to have spent around six months in this mystery safe house.

As Smith asks, could It be possible that Eisenhower – a respected high-ranking military figure before he became President of the United States in 1952 – also spent time at this safe house with Setimus? It is certainly possible. And what’s more, these apparent meetings could very well be connected to the alleged meeting in February 1954, when Eisenhower was around 18 months into his first term in the White House. The document certainly states that he did meet with President Truman while in Vermont, as well as several other high-ranking military and intelligence figures.

The revelations in the briefing document continued, with the declaration that Setimus was returned to New Mexico in August 1949, specifically, to Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque where, on 21^st August, an extraterrestrial craft landed on a “remote desert property nearby” which he then boarded and left the Earth for a destination unknown.

Further Intriguing Details

It is worth staying with the research of Paul Blake Smith a little while longer, as he does indeed highlight some intriguing details that could very well suggest there is more to these outrageous claims than many people might think. As Smith writes:

“Harry Truman’s White House appointment logs for Monday, August 1, 1949, reveal that the Republican Governor of Vermont, of all people, had called Vermont’s Republican Senator George David Aiken the previous week and asked Aiken to set up an appointment with the president for 12:15 pm that day in the Oval Office. It had to have been about something pretty darn important, considering these circumstances.”

Could this important reason have been the impending arrival of an entity from another world? It would certainly have been something that would be of concern to the people involved. Smith continues that around the same time “conservative Governor Ernest William Gibson Jr. – a former decorated Army infantryman from rural, small-town Vermont – traveled a long way to chat in private” with Harry Truman – a chat that was “off the record”. It is said this meeting was barely 15 minutes long, but, as Smith writes, “something big was up, it is logical to assume”.

There were also other, seemingly last-minute discreet meetings by high-ranking figures around this time which would suggest something major was about to, or indeed, already was happening behind the scenes. In late July, only days before the apparent moving of Setimus from New Mexico to Vermont, another Vermont congressman had a discreet meeting with President Truman at the White House. Of further interest was an apparent meeting in the Oval Office on 4^th August 1949 between President Truman and both his Secretary of State, and his Defense Secretary – a meeting that once concluded saw all three travel to an unrecorded destination. What’s more, there is no official record of the whereabouts until five days later. Could this have been the Vermont safe house, and did they meet with Setimus?

The Infamous 1954 Meeting

Although we won’t examine it in depth here as we have done so previously, it is worth our time briefly recalling the apparent meeting between President Eisenhower and alien beings five years after Setimus departed from Kirtland Air Force Base in an extraterrestrial vehicle.

According to other leaked documents that entered the public arena around five years before the briefing document that told of Setimus, on the evening of 20^th February 1954, President Dwight Eisenhower met with representative of not one, but two alien races in an empty air force hangar at Edwards Air Force Base in California. And he did so, according to most researchers, under the guise of requiring emergency dental treatment.

This first meeting was said to be with humanoid entities (very similar to Setimus), with the talks revolving around advanced technology, medical procedures, and ideas of clean energy and a need to move away from fossil fuels. According to most versions of the account, a deal for access to this technology in return for a break away from fossil fuel use was not reached. Then, however, an already strange situation turned even stranger.

According to some reports, shortly after these humanoid alien entity representatives had vacated the air base, another race of aliens landed. It is not clear if this was an expected arrival or not, but these aliens were said to be of the grey alien variety that would be described in many alien abduction cases from the early 1960s onward – only six years after the alleged meeting. And the apparent conclusion of these second talks – at least according to some sources – resulted in a deal that, at least to some, is bordering on the unbelievable.

A Deal That Led To Alien Abduction

According to some, Eisenhower reached a deal with this second group of aliens – grey alien – and they did so for a variety of reasons. According to many sources, Eisenhower was offered a deal in which advanced technology would be passed exclusively to the United States in return for “access” to the human population for discreet experiments from which they would be released back to their home without harm or knowledge of their experiences. These experiments were – according to what the Eisenhower representatives were told – were merely for scientific purposes.

We might imagine that no president would ever agree to such a deal. However, aside from the access to advanced technology that would put the United States as the top player on the world stage, but it would stop these grey alien entities, at least according to their assurances, from making a similar deal with the Americans’ Cold War foes, the Soviet Union. With this in mind, if we accept the claims of some kind of interstellar deal was reached, it is a little easier to imagine why such a deal might have been acceptable to those representing the United States indeed, the free world.

Of course, with this meeting in 1954 did take place or whether it is nothing more than a hoax or fabrication remains open to debate. It is perhaps interesting, though, that cases of alien abduction began to rise during the following decades. Was this the grey aliens exercising their rights of the deal?

Hoax Or Purposeful Disinformation?

As we mentioned in the opening, there are many people, even within UFO circles, who believe the Aztec Crash is nothing put pure fabrications, or, at best, the result of some incident taking place that has simply been embellished, both at the time and over the years. And, of course, this would put the claims of an alien entity named Setimus on much shakier ground.

As speculative, and unlikely, as it sounds, we might wonder if it wasn’t the notion of one local newspaper editor who might have recalled the immediate sensation of the Roswell crash who might desire a similar exclusive to bring sales to their respective newspaper. Or any number of businesspeople who might have benefited from the surge of attention the area would experience if such an event had taken place there.

It is important to note, this is pure speculation simply to play Devil’s advocate on our part. And while such suggestions might be possible, they are extremely unlikely, not least due to the number of people who have spoken of the incident over the years, as well as some of the respected UFO investigators and researchers who have been involved with the case.

One such researcher was Frank Scully, who can perhaps be considered to be the original source of the account. Scully is widely regarded as one of the first serious UFO investigators. However, over time, many of his claims began to be picked apart.

It has been suggested by some that Scully was seen as a threat by the military and government alike in terms of his investigations into UFOs. So much so, that a decision was made to feed him with false information so as to hurt his credibility on the subject, and, in turn, the credibility of the subject itself. Could the Aztec crash have been part of this disinformation campaign? Or might the Aztec crash, as reported by Scully, have been accurate and credible, and so leading to his once-trusted sources suddenly feeding him false claims so as to enshroud the claims of crashed UFO at Aztec in similar falseness?

With this in mind, it is worth recalling an interview with Scully’s wife, Alice, after his death in the late 1970s. According to Alice, she witnessed a conversation between her late husband and Captain Edward Ruppelt, the one-time head of Project Blue Book in the 1950s. Alice claimed that Ruppelt stated to her husband that “of all the books published about flying saucers, your book was the one that gave us the most headaches because it was closest to the truth”. Perhaps we should make of that what we will.

A Discreet Defining Moment In Human History?

It goes without saying that should there be any truth whatsoever in the crashed UFO at Aztec and the resulting meeting and prolonged communication between the only surviving alien, a meeting that very well could have resulted in further meetings between beings from another world with future presidents of the United States, then it would be arguably one of the most defining events in not only UFO history, but the history of humanity as a whole.

If we assume this contact did indeed take place, then we might ask, are certain individuals from the world’s governments still in contact with these extraterrestrials today? Is our modern world the result of advanced and gifted alien technology? And is it possible that we could have been gifted even greater technology for such things as green and natural energies that have been kept out of the public domain in order for world governments to maintain their grip on energy supplies and the mass profits that they get from that control? Or might this potential greater technology have been withheld by these extraterrestrials due to our warlike nature?

Indeed, in what is already murky waters, only further investigation and the hope that further information comes forward in such as claims as those like the Setimus account.

The short video below examines the Aztec UFO Crash in a little more detail.